Let’s start with the big Dylanological news. Bob Dylan gave St. Louis a hometown surprise at last night’s sold-out Stifel Theatre show by opening with “Johnny B. Goode,” the first time he’s ever played the song at one of his own shows. (In fact, “Johnny B. Goode” had previously appeared just twice before at Dylan-involved shows: Once when he sat in with Taj Mahal in 1987 and once while guesting with the Grateful Dead in 2003, neither of which was in St. Louis.)
One hour and 45 minutes later, after an elegiac version of “Every Grain of Sand,” the standard closer on Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, Dylan called an audible to his band and launched into “Nadine (Is It You?),” thereby bookending the St. Louis stop with Chuck Berry classics. It was the second-ever “Nadine” for a Dylan show; the only other was at the Muny in the summer of ‘88.
Given Dylan’s lack of stage banter — limited last night to a couple of “well, thank you”s and mumbly band introductions — and rigid tour setlists, his shows have not typically contained any crowd-tickling site-specific enhancements. However, this past Sunday, Dylan opened his Kansas City show with the Lieber-Stoller classic “Kansas City,” and by giving St. Louis a double shot of Chuck Berry, the old bard who was born and raised in St. Louis County, Minnesota, is demonstrating a playful spirit in giving crowds some local love at the beginning of the fall leg of his current tour.
The tour’s tagline is “Things Aren’t What They Were,” which has, of course, always been Dylan’s shape-shifting modus operandi, and he lived up to it at the Stifel. So while providing some good-natured pandering with the Chuck tunes, Dylan otherwise followed his mother of muses with little regard to the expectations that saddle other legacy acts. He touched neither guitar nor harmonica all night, and nine out of the set’s 15 originals were songs from his latest album, 2020’s masterful Rough and Rowdy Ways. Imagine McCartney or the Stones going on tour today and playing the entirety of a new album with just six songs from the rest of their catalog.
But Dylan is in a class by himself, the ruler of his own shadow kingdom, container of multitudes, forever freewheelin’, always breaking out another side of himself. Dylan has made it clear that he’s going right to the edge, right to the end. And it all worked beautifully (although you are unlikely to see any footage of the show as phones were secured in YONDR pouches upon entering the theater).
Even among the six back-catalog Dylan songs, he was more elusive, with his selections this time out compared to his previous Stifel concert in 2019 when he played such crowd-pleasers as “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “To Make You Feel My Love” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” This time, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was the closest Dylan came to playing an old “hit”; it was one of just three ‘60s tracks on the night, alongside Nashville Skyline’s “To Be Alone With You” and the Blonde on Blonde chestnut “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine.”
Two songs from the 2019 Stifel made it back into last night’s set: “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” It would be tempting to credit the latter as being Dylan’s way of noting the passing of his old cohort Robbie Robertson — the song’s first appearance was on The Band’s Cahoots album — but Dylan has been playing it all tour long, well before Robertson’s death in August.
At a center-stage baby grand piano, Dylan, dressed in a black suit and white shoes, alternated between sitting and standing at the keys, occasionally tugging his obstreperous shock of hair skyward and shambling out to the side of the piano a time or two to let the audience get a full view of him. Film lights flanked the stage, casting the six-piece band in a yellow glow that gave the stage an eerie mise en scène.
Dylan’s voice sounded clearer and more nimble than in years, as though his deep dive into Sinatra and American pop standards in the 20-teens renovated and enlivened his singing, and he had a great night interpreting his own songs.
The band kept things marvelously loose, as guitarists Bob Britt and Doug Lancio gave Dylan’s voice and piano plenty of room to breathe while circling the songs with exquisite coloring. Drummer Jerry Pentecost, last seen in St. Louis playing with Old Crow Medicine Show, provided impeccable touch, twirling his brushes, exploring dynamics, making the songs swing and forming a pas de deux with bassist and Dylan lifer Tony Garnier.
“I Contain Multitudes” was, like so much of the night’s material, gorgeously arranged albeit reworked to the cusp of being unrecognizable, a Dylan tradition. “False Prophet,” a Dylanesque manifesto if there ever was one, found Dylan remarkably adroit on the piano, nothing like his ghostly presence would suggest, and with the piano way up in the mix and the other players taking on ancillary roles, Dylan’s piano became the evening’s chief melodic instrument, and he was clearly having fun with it. In fact, several songs began with unaccompanied piano before the band fell in behind him and eyed him for changes like a group of cornermen watching a pugilist in the center of the ring.
Other highlights included an acoustic-based middle section with Garnier switching to doghouse bass and multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron supplying bucolic fiddle on “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” mandolin on the noir-icana meditation “Black Rider,” and pedal steel on the slow-blues “Crossing the Rubicon.”
“Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” was the show’s centerpiece and longest song, undulating and dreamlike, Dylan’s sprechstimme technique floating atop a lovely, tom-abetted, piano-centric cascade. “Gotta Serve Somebody” was slinky and shadowed, as haunted as it was sanctified, with the guitars fighting for space amid Dylan’s right-hand phrasing. Dylan altered the melody to “I Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” but it still sounded like one of his prettiest ballads in ages.
Johnny Mercer’s “That Old Black Magic” was recast as Elvis jazz, “Mother of Muses” was bowed-bass haunted gospel, and “Goodbye Jimmy Reed” was the night’s thumpingest breakout with Dylan getting rambunctious on the keys.
So gone is the shifty-eyed gambler persona and the extended jamability of recent years, replaced by Dylan as earnest crooner intent to put on a classy stage show that exhibits the barbaric yawper of right now, which on the strength of these new songs is a sprawling musical and lyrical force — at turns the romantic, the joker, the weary immortalist crossing the rubicon, one step from the great beyond.
Who knows if the 82-year-old Bob Dylan will pass this way again, which was reason enough to be in the same space as him last night, contemplating as much of the legend as it’s possible to take in. But Dylan isn’t much interested in your nostalgia. He’s too busy keeping the path open, pouring new cups and passing them along.
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